My Sunflowers. New Piece Finished!

My Sunflowers, 23 x 23 inches on industrial paneled plywood. Images include sunflowers I've grown in my gardens as well as members of my family and photographs from my collection. There's a pale yellow tiger swallowtail butterfly worked in as well, and it perfectly blends in with the sunflowers.

Sparkly Things: Vintage Gold Mesh Bags

I really don't know anything about these vintage gold mesh handbags. They were my mom's, bought in the 1950s, and are still like-new. One of them actually still has a little blue sales tag on it! The maker is "Whiting & Davis, Co" and they're still in business. I've always liked to hold these bags, even as a child. They're slinky! They're cool to the touch, have nice linings, and one has a little mirror inside wrapped in the same gold satin as the lining. The history of the company can be found, here. Apparently beginning in the 1950s the company started gifting each new First Lady with their gold mesh bags, but with diamond clasps...

MoreColour!

I call these dahlias in my garden "fraternal twins." They're both blooming on the same plant but are opposites of each other, one light pink with darker pink center and the other darker pink with a lighter center.

June may have moved but her Butterfly bush is doing splendidly! Of course she checks it weekly to make sure I'm taking care of it, lol.

This dahlia is a beautiful creamy white until it fully opens and ages, then this yellow with a bit of pink shows up. I find dahlias utterly fascinating to grow. I hope I'm able to grow them for years to come. 

 This dahlia has very simple petals but I love it. It has a very Sixties "Flower Power" shape to it.

One of the Victorian cast-iron planters in front of Pink Gardens. I outdid myself this year if you ask me, lol! Almost everything in these planters is rooted in water all winter inside and then replanted in the spring. This is a brand new geranium, though, and the yellow Lantana is new as well. I do well with a zero budget! 

Summer Flying By

This pretty magenta/red Beebalm is new to the garden this year. They stand about 4-feet tall and should multiply readily through the years. I did some gardening for a friend and she wanted a bunch of these taken out so they could see traffic better from the driveway. She put them in a bucket and I brought them home and planted them!

One of my dahlias this year is this pink variety. This one seemed to be wearing a cap. Those two petals never fully unfurled in the right direction.

A very wet dark orange marigold is home to this bright green insect. You see the coolest little things when you look.

My other marigold variety this year is this solid orange one. I've been growing the same marigold strains for about 10 years. Dried flowers can be picked and very easily harvested for seeds. 

Some of the sedum is beginning to blossom.

So far we've had mostly squash flowers, but I see two small fruit finally starting to form.

The day lilies were fast this year. This is a few days ago and they're almost done blooming already. Hundreds of stems to deadhead now!

I planted an old onion this spring and this came up. I have no idea if the same onion will be in the ground of if there will be a few of them. I've never grown onions before.

Tomatoes are coming along pretty well. My cherry tomato bush doesn't look healthy all of a sudden. These are full size "Mountain Fresh Air" and are supposed to be very large, bright red, and juicy...

Second Period

"Reading Between the Lines" is made from three vintage clapboards joined together.

I've come to think of my work done from 2008-2011, give or take a year on either side, as my "second period" of paintings. I concentrated less on a single central image and began working smaller images into cohesive wholes, or as I like to think, wrote a song with harmonies. If an image is a musical note, I string notes together into a nicely orchestrated song by the end of my pieces, lol. All of my vintage images are from my family's collection of negatives, slides, and prints.

"And Thus it Began." This piece includes very brittle, lacy dried leaves which Nature radically decomposed for me. I found them on my daily walks, in the fall, and each one was a work of art. I knew I had to include them in some art. They're completely clearcoated and will last forever. Or longer than I will, lol.

"Pals, Peaks." Images include an artfully designed poem I wrote in the 1980s, as well as scans from an old 1920s children's book that belonged to my mother.